Sinking Mets left kicking themselves after self-destructing against Yankees

NEW YORK – Taking measure of their mistakes – the ball that found the crawlspace under shortstop Omar Quintanilla’s glove, the ball that third baseman David Wright bounced past first base – the Mets understood the reasons why their last chance to steal a game in the Bronx spilled into the sewer system.

They played sloppy. And they knew they played sloppy.

“We have some stuff to clean up,” first baseman Ike Davis said after his team’s 5-4 loss in the Subway Series finale.

Davis was calm, choosing optimism over venom. Mets manager Terry Collins tried taking the same tact, but acknowledged there is ironing to be done.

Asked to pin a label on his clubhouse after losing six of seven, Collins settled on the word “angry.” Minutes earlier, reliever Jon Rauch offered evidence of his manager’s diagnosis with a hot blast of wrath. A polite inquiry about the pitch Rauch threw to Russell Martin on the winning home run triggered pure fury.

“Were you guys watching the game or no?” Rauch scolded reporters. “He [expletive] hit it a mile.”

Rauch was left hanging his head; the team’s defense was left holding the bag. Up 3-0 in the seventh, eight outs away from avoiding the sweep, the Mets lost their grip on the game.

Wright opened the first door. One out from surviving the seventh inning, Wright made a tricky stab on an Andruw Jones ground ball.

His throw across the diamond was less inspiring. It bounced, and Vinny Rottino – filling in for Davis at first base – could not handle it.

Martin made him pay for the mistake, slamming the first of two home runs over the outfield wall.

“It bothers me to make errors,” Wright said, “but it’s part of the game. It’s something where I got to the ball, I just couldn’t get a very good grip on it, so it happens.

“You hope that on defense you try to pick your pitchers up and you hope that your pitcher can pick you up. In this case, Russell hit a good pitch and it happens. I don’t try to make errors. I want to go out there and make all the plays but, unfortunately, that’s not going to happen.”

Whatever shot the Mets had to put down a win in cement vanished when Derek Jeter went walking right through it. His team trailing, 3-2, Jeter hit a bouncing ball toward Quintanilla at short. It squeezed into the space beneath Quintanilla’s glove, allowing Jeter to scoot to second.

“He’s a very, very good shortstop,” Collins said. “The ball just stayed under his glove.”

What followed was a good ballclub seizing on that miscue: a tying RBI single from Mark Teixeira and a go-ahead RBI single from Alex Rodriguez.

“We aren’t the kind of club that can make a lot of mistakes,” Collins said. “And when you give teams as good as the New York Yankees or anybody else in the big leagues multiple-out innings, they’re going to get you.”

Collins and several players have long insisted that this is a good defensive team, even though the raw numbers weave a different narrative. By the time Sunday’s game had ended, the Mets’ .978 fielding percentage was the fourth-worst in the majors.

“We’ve kind of given away a couple,” Davis said. “We had chances to win. And it’s not a good feeling. But we’re still positive. It’s really early in the season. We’re playing good baseball. We’re giving ourselves chances to win. Hopefully later in the next couple games we start capitalizing on those.”